RR 639 Evaluation of Phase 1 City Strategy
by Anne E. Green, Duncan Adam and Chris Hasluck
The City Strategy Pathfinders (CSPs) initiative is intended to combat the issues of worklessness and poverty by empowering local institutions to develop local solutions. This national evaluation of the initiative takes the form of a meta-evaluation where evidence from a number of sources (not just from the CSPs) is collated, synthesised and assessed. The overarching objective of the national evaluation is to assess the extent to which CSPs are suitable models for future devolved employment programmes in deprived areas and for those groups most disadvantaged in the labour market; it aims to assess the different models of partnership working in the CSPs, measure employment rates and benefit flows in the pathfinders, consider how devolving power to innovate helps the most disadvantaged groups, and to determine the most appropriate geographical level for employment service provision.
The partnership and governance arrangements of each CSP are distinct and the partnerships have evolved over time. There is clear evidence of cultural change and of new ways of inter-organisational working, however, in general, CSPs have had less local freedom than they envisaged originally. Most CSP activity has been in the fields of client engagement and employer engagement. Many have targeted their resources, either by area or by benefit sub-group. Some CSPs have focused mainly on delivery in the form of new projects while others have given primacy to strategic development. Measuring outcomes by quantitative investigation has been difficult and there are no clear-cut answers on the questions of attribution, added value and distance travelled.
March 2010 170 pages 297x210mm
ISBN 978 1 84712 728 0
(980 KB)